Dear Planet Earth at christmas (Warning: might bring your festive spirit down)

[Deedles]

Hehe my MIL told me to bring DS's stockings down to where we are stayin over Chrissy and she is going to put an orange in each of them! I had never heard of that before. I just got choccies in mine.

I also agree that good solid plastic that I made to last is awesome! We still have Lego from when my dad was little.
The only thing I hate is when my friends or my grandmother think they are being awesome and buy $2 toy cars from the cheap shop. They open them an literally they just crumble into pieces. Which is not only devastating for the boys but makes me wonder how they can make things to sell that just break!

So many things these days are built to break I swear! The money you think your saving on an item goes out the window if it breaks the second you use it!

[Phteven]

We always got an orange too.
And Father Christmas.... wysiwyg, you made me miss my Mum. No-one in Australia say Father Christmas. It's always Santa Claus.
I have some origami paper packed so we're going to be making origami stars, angels, santas and boxes for our 'tree'.

Em...., I wasn't having a go at you. Sorry if you felt that way. Just chatting about paper.

[BrightSparkles]

I heard about the oranges today. Whats that about? I'm confused

[Phteven]

The original legend of St Nicolas had him throwing bags of gold down the chimney of some poor sisters who were drying their stockings in front of the fire. So the oranges symbolise the bags of gold and until recently in the Northern hemisphere and orange was unseasonal and hence a bit of a luxury in the middle of winter.

[wysiwyg]

And Father Christmas.... wysiwyg, you made me miss my Mum. No-one in Australia say Father Christmas. It's always Santa Claus.

I hadn't really noticed until you mentioned it about Father Christmas vs Santa Claus (I never noticed people don't use the word pushchair here for ages either) - sometimes I say Santa as we did use that in England too but normally is Father Christmas for me - DD is obsessed with the differences between the two countries since I told her the different versions for Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes, and Hokey Cokey vs Hokey Pokey. Every song she wants to know the English version now (most are exactly the same).

Father Christmas is eco friendly here and doesn't wrap presents in the stocking - he never did for me either (he also had to staple the tops to stop me looking in my brother and sisters) - and we never ever thought it was weird as kids that others got wrapped presents from Father Christmas and we didn't. Funny is a question adults always ask but we never thought twice about it - I think as grownups we think children are always wanting to catch us out about Father Christmas but really they are just happy to believe and aren't doing CSI style investigations to discover the truth (not till older anyway). One year I discovered a list of what had been in my stocking by my dads bed, I asked him about it and he said when you came and showed me I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget (and I just accepted that). We also used to accept that sometimes he made mistakes and put things in the wrong stocking, or leave things in various cupboards around the house which wouldn't be discovered till March.